State shuts Knott's ride for investigation

Riders on the Windseeker ride at Knott's Berry Farm get stuck Wednesday afternoon around 4 p.m. The 300-foot-high ride held about 20 people captive as the park's ride maintenance crews worked to get the passengers down. The riders were stuck until almost 8 p.m. ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Riders on the Windseeker ride at Knott's Berry Farm get stuck Wednesday afternoon around 4p.m. The 300-foot-high ride held about 20 people captive as the park's ride maintenance crews worked to get the passengers down. The riders were stuck until almost 8 p.m. ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Riders on the Windseeker ride at Knott's Berry Farm get stuck Wednesday afternoon around 4p.m. The 300-foot-high ride held about 20 people captive as the park's ride maintenance crews worked to get the passengers down. The riders were stuck until almost 8 p.m. ROD VEAL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Windseeker, Knott's Berry Farm's newest ride, holds 64 riders in 32 suspended twin seats. It takes riders 301 feet into the air and spins them at eight rotations per minute, or about 25-30 mph, for three minutes. FILE PHOTO: MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Riders get buckled into their seats on Windseeker, Knott's Berry Farm newest ride, in 2011. FILE PHOTO: MARK RIGHTMIRE, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

2011: The Cedar Point opening is postponed from May 6 to June 21. The Canada opening is pushed from May 8 to May 24. The Knott’s ride was to open Memorial Day weekend but is delayed until August, in part because of undisclosed problems that forced a short closure of the just-opened Canadian ride.

June: The Cedar Point ride strands 29 riders 125 feet in the air for more than an hour. Officials say the ride stopped unexpectedly. The riders were brought down manually. No injuries.

July: At Carowinds, 25 people are stuck for three hours. No cause given for the malfunction. No injuries.

Sept. 7: The Knott’s ride traps 15 people for three hours until employees can manually lower the swings. The malfunction is attributed to an inaccurate reading in an electrical safety switch. No injuries.

Sept. 19: The Knott’s ride strands 20 riders for three and a half hours. The security system activated, causing the ride to stall at the top of the tower. No injuries.

Comparing ride heights

BUENA PARK – State officials indefinitely shut a Knott's Berry Farm ride while they investigate two incidents in which visitors were stranded hundreds of feet in the air for hours, a problem that also occurred in other parks.

Windseeker was closed Wednesday night after 20 visitors were stuck 300 feet above the ground for almost four hours while crews tried to fix a brake malfunction. State inspectors were investigating a Sept. 7 incident in which 15 people were trapped on the ride for three hours because of an electrical problem.

The state Division of Occupational Safety and Health plans to look at the technical causes of the incidents, as well why visitors were stuck for so long. The ride will remain closed during the investigation, but it is uncertain how long the closure will last.

"That's a long time to be on a ride," said Erika Monterroza, a division spokeswoman. "And part of what we're going to be looking at (is) working with the park to get a process in place to evacuate the patrons more quickly."

The same Windseeker ride also has stranded passengers at parks in North Carolina and Ohio. Cedar Fair Entertainment Co., Knott's Berry Farm's parent company, built Windseeker rides in six of its parks in 2011 and 2012. The Knott's ride opened Aug. 24, 2011.

Windseeker takes riders in swing-like chairs about 300 feet in the air, where they whirl at up to a 45-degree angle. Windseeker was manufactured by Mondial, a Netherlands-based ride company that began in 1987. An email message sent to Mondial was not returned Thursday.

Stacy Frole, a Cedar Fair spokeswoman, said the ride has a manual process to bring down vehicles when the safety system is triggered, which happened at the three parks.

"Unfortunately, in this situation, it's just a manual process at this point of time," Frole said. "If there's an opportunity to improve it, we'd definitely look at this."

In Buena Park, available rescue cranes are too short to reach riders: The Orange County Fire Authority's aerial ladders go up about 100 feet – 200 feet shy of the passengers. If a rider were suffering from a medical emergency, firefighters would have had to use a helicopter hoist as a rescue tool.

"We were ready to respond if they needed us," Capt. Marc Stone said. Police were not called to the scene.

Jennifer Blazey, a Knott's spokeswoman, said park crews worked to resolve the incident.

About 4 p.m. Wednesday, a brake froze and stopped the ride. Crews used a crank to manually raise the seats to the top, where they got stuck. Mechanics had to climb to the top of the ride to get the brake to release, Monterroza said. The riders got down about 7:45 p.m.

"I'm just happy to be on the ground," said Abbie Bocchini, a girl on a video for Focal Point on Wednesday. "We were up there a few hours. My family. ... I couldn't stop thinking of them. I couldn't contact them until I got down."

Mother Cybill Giacomaro waited on the ground while her daughter was stuck on the ride.

"I was nervous and worried the whole time," Giacomaro said on the video. "We were just waiting to see what was going to happen and really nervous and worried about when the ride was going to come down. And I had no way to contact her, so I didn't know what they were going through, and I'm just really relieved that they're here safe and on the ground."

In the Sept. 7 incident, an electrical relay malfunctioned on the ride, prompting a safety stop. Crews cranked the gondolas to the top and got them to come down, Monterroza said. Knott's replaced the electric parts and opened the ride the next day, although the state continued its investigation.

Mike Dills, whose 11-year-old daughter got stuck Sept. 7, said he's upset that this happened again. He was told that Knott's was going to change procedures to ensure that passengers could get down within 30 minutes.

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